Dr. Merlin Friesen, an emergency room physician at Beatrice Community Hospital, testified in support of LB 472 - the Medicaid Redesign Act - to the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee on February 25, 2015.
“As a physician I’ve spent 30 years watching the impact of declining health insurance or increasing uninsured numbers, and the health impacts of that," Dr. Friesen said. "We rank near the bottom among industrialized countries in health care outcomes, and a large part of that is due to the fact that we leave so many people outside of the system.
"It’s heartbreaking to see people struggling with the impact of major illness, only to deal with at the same time, the issue of if this is going to bankrupt them because they don’t have the money to pay their bills.”